Faculty of Management and Entrepreneurial Sciences : Call for Research Grant Proposals 

Capabilities, strategies, skills and opportunities of female oriented businesses to recover and remain resilient from the devastating effects of the COVID-19: A gendered dimension to business success in periods of global pandemics

Globally, governments, corporate institutions and non-governmental organisations have worked tirelessly to bridge the gender disparities within societies. Various policies such as the International Federation Gender Policy, National Gender Policy, and Gender mainstreaming Policy have been initiated as strategies to realising gender equality. However, despite these efforts, gender disparities still exist within the domain of Management. The COVID-19 has gad a devastating effect on all business enterprise across the globe. The effect has been more devastating for females owned enterprises. There is therefore need to undertake research studies focusing on building capacities and resilience of that will help female led enterprises recover and be competitive in view of the current challenges that  the business sector is facing as a result if the pandemic.  Although women’s access to education and skills development has steadily improved thus paving way to vast career opportunities, they remain underrepresented in positions of management and leadership. With an uneven playing field in aspects of skills development, compensation and promotion, this gender imbalance may reflect systemic challenges in engaging women, hence the need to research on various strategic management and development processes in order to identify challenges that prevent society and institutions from fully leveraging women’s contributions. By so doing, appropriate strategies can be recommended in order to facilitate systemic changes in society and institutions required to bridge this gender disparity thus promoting gender diversity in management.  The areas focused in the research studies are meant to built capacities and capabilities of females in their various business enterprises. These capabilities are indeed required the business sector attempt to recover from the devastating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. This can be achieved through research conducted with the aim of facilitating the (1) engagement, (2) empowerment, and (3) emergence of women within the following research areas:

• Leadership
• Marketing
• Strategic Management
• Human Resource Management
• Purchasing and Supply/Logistics
• Information Communication Technologies
• Financial Management and Accounting

OBJECTIVES:

Develop capabilities, skills and strategies that will help business enterprises owned by women to recover, grow and remain competitive and take up opportunities even in the current difficulty periods due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The research studies seek to build resilience in females operated business enterprises

The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic are now known based on various studies undertaken to date. It is now the time to focus research on strategies to recover, promote resilience and growth in the wake of continuing pandemic as evidenced by increased waves of the COVID-19.

The puzzle at hand is not much about the impact but the recovery path that female owned enterprises must take in view of the growth waves of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Expected Outputs

As a final output of the conducted research, each grant recipient is required to produce and submit a high quality publishable manuscript (6000 to 8000 words) by 29th of October 2021 for publication. All manuscripts shall undergo rigorous internal and external peer reviewing with authors expected to address all the comments given by the reviewers.

Application Procedure

Please attach and e-mail the following documents to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. , This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. by the 9th of July 2021:

1. Research proposal (2000-3000 words) –The research proposal should contain:

• Title of Project
• Introduction and Background of the study
• Statement of the problem
• Research objectives/questions or hypothesis
• Justification of the study
• Research Methodology

1. b) Research plan – Briefly outline when and where the different components of the research project shall be carried out.
2. c) Simplified budget – Please provide a budget outlining each cost associated with carrying out the research project and a rationale for each expenditure.

Timelines

1. Closing date for submitting a research grant proposal: 9th of July 2021
2. Notification to applicants of the Selection Committee’s decision: on or before 16th of July 2021
3. Submission of a complete paper: on or before 24th of September 2021